'Royal Pains,' 'Burn Notice' reviews - Sepinwall on TV

Paulo Costanzo and Mark Feuerstein play brothers in USA's new "Royal Pains."

Imitation is the sincerest form of television. Once a network has a hit, it's going to do everything possible to copy it and copy it until viewers lose interest. It's why most of the shows on CBS involve the solving of crime with the help of electron microscopes, why every NBC sitcom of the late '90s was about attractive New Yorkers looking for love, and why tonight USA follows the return of

"Burn Notice"

(still the most fun you can have in front of your TV set in the summer) with the debut of

"Royal Pains,"

which is more or less "Burn Notice, MD."
Like "Burn Notice," "Royal Pains" is about a hotshot young professional (here,

Mark Feuerstein

as surgeon Hank Lawson) whose rapid ascent comes to an abrupt end (because a wealthy hospital donor dies while Hank's busy tending to a more critically injured patient) and who finds himself in a glitzy beachside playground (the summertime Hamptons) doing odd jobs for odd clients while waiting for his career to return to life.

And, like "Burn Notice" hero Michael Westen (Jeffrey Donovan ), Hank even has a flair for improvising with whatever materials happen to be handy. Late in the hour-plus "Royal Pains" pilot, Hank asks for an X-Acto knife, a plastic sandwich bag, duct tape and a ballpoint pen to help save a young patient's life, and the boy's girlfriend asks, "What are you, MacGyver?" (If USA wasn't pre-presumably hoping for a "Burn"/"Pains" crossover, I'm sure they would have had her go with the more au courant, "What are you, a burned ex-spy?")

Premiering immediately after "Burn Notice," "Royal Pains" can't help but suffer in comparison, but it's not a bad summer diversion - which, frankly, is all that "Burn Notice" was in its first season. (The show took a huge leap forward in quality from season one to season two, and again midway through season two.)

Yes, Feuerstein is as vanilla as he was in his previous series' leading roles - an impressively bland collection that includes "Conrad Bloom," "3 lbs." and "Good Morning, Miami" - but he's not unlikable, and the show around him has enough zip to compensate for what he's failing to bring to the table.

After Hank's career falls apart, his younger brother Evan (Paulo Costanzo) - who lists "extreme social climbing" as his favorite sport - shows up to spirit him away to the Hamptons for a swank Memorial Day party being thrown by a vaguely royal European emigre named Boris (Campbell Scott, who needs to be around more than I suspect he will).

"You kind of look like Jesus and Patrick Dempsey had a child, and that child grew older and then got sick," Evan tells Hank after finding him in the aftermath of a weeks-long Netflix binge.

The women of the Hamptons don't have much interest in an unemployed doctor who drives a beat-up Saab - until, that is, Hank winds up saving the life of one of Boris' guests as Boris' own "concierge doctor" is about to fatally misdiagnose the woman with a drug overdose.

Word of Hank's talent - and discretion - spreads quickly, and much as he'd like to head back to the city, he keeps finding his services in demand from rich eccentrics who pay in cash (or gold bricks) and distrust the local hospital because their housekeepers and drivers go there.

It's a fun setting, even in (or perhaps because of) the lousy economy here in the real world, and provides easy opportunity for guest stars like Scott and Christine Ebersole (as a plastic surgery addict known as "New Parts" Newberg) to make fast, amusing impressions.

Still, Hank's guerilla medicine can't quite hold a candle to the Michael Westen playbook. It's interesting to see Hank immobilize a patient's neck with a pair of gym bags, but not nearly as much as to see Michael (in the season's third "Burn Notice" episode) hack an opponent's cell phone by building a Bluetooth antenna out of a coat hanger, metal washers and a potato chip can.

While Hank's sidekicks (also including Reshma Shetty as a well-connected physician's assistant) provide good comic relief, they're not on a par with Michael's partners, gun-runner (and sometime girlfriend) Fiona (Gabrielle Anwar) and talkative former Navy SEAL Sam (Bruce Campbell). And, again, Feuerstein's charisma deficit is particularly glaring when paired with the cool of Jeffrey Donovan, who manages to keep a character who's good at virtually everything from being remotely dull.

As the new season of "Burn Notice" begins, Michael has finally found out who got him kicked out of the spy business (the introductory voiceover now says "as long as you're burned, you're not going anywhere"), but that knowledge proves less than useful. He's still unemployable, except as a freelance do-gooder, and without the protection of the people who burned him, he's now popping up on the radar of every law-enforcement and intelligence agency he's ever crossed.

"Mike, this is not good," Sam warns him. "You've been swimming away from bad guys a little too often these days."

The new season mixes Michael's traditional weekly jobs - say. helping an estranged couple rescue their kidnapped son - with Michael, Fiona and Sam fending off the many enemies who have now come calling. Jay Karnes ("The Shield") reprises his role from last season as an arms dealer who Michael can't outthink, and Moon Bloodgood ("Terminator Salvation") has a recurring role as a Miami cop who's suddenly very curious about all the mayhem Michael allegedly has committed in her town.

It's, as always, a frantic lifestyle. When Fiona tells Michael's mother Madeline (Sharon Gless) that he's too busy to stop by and see her, Madeline asks, "Busy? Busy being shot at or busy being blown up? Doesn't he ever take a day off?"

Thankfully, Michael will be working hard all summer, while never seeming to break a sweat. And if "Royal Pains" isn't up to the standards of one of the most entertaining shows on television - in any season - just yet, that's not a sin, is it?